Thursday, July 10, 2014

John Ford in Navajo Country

John Ford wanted real faces in his films. While he would settle for Hollywood
professionals when necessary, his preference was for authenticity over
professionalism. Ford liked the rugged look
of the residents of Moab,
the small Utah
town that served as the hub for filming Wagon
Master (1950). He welcomed the
locals as extras.

Navajo actors playing Navajo Indians
in Wagon Master (1950).

But Ford imported his Indians from Monument Valley,
approximately 150 miles south of Moab. When filming his
classic film Stagecoach (1939)
ten years earlier, Ford was introduced both to MonumentValley and
the Diné—the Navajo people who lived in the area. He instinctively liked
and trusted them. Over time, many came to return the respect, calling
Ford “Natani Nez” which means “tall leader.” A core of about fifty Navajo emerged who would serve from that point on as Ford’s all-purpose Indians (regardless of the tribe they were supposed to be from).

John Stanley often served as the unofficial leader of Ford’s Indian crew,
organizing his team and translating for the Hollywood
folk. Other key players among the Navajo were Bob Many Mules, Harry Black Horse, Pete Gray Eyes, George Holliday, Billy Yellow, Talks a Lot, Keith Smith, Lee and Frank Bradley, Stanley’s father Jack, and his brother Yellow Hair. Ford treated them fairly well, but they
rarely received credit and their names remain largely absent from the standard film histories.

During the winter of 1948, less than a year before the filming
of Wagon Master, an unusually deep
snow endangered the Native inhabitants of MonumentValley. According to Scott Eyman in the Ford biography Print the Legend, Ford swiftly and generously responded with
Operation Haylift, arranging for friends in the military to airdrop food to the
Navajo. The following fall, he invited
the Navajo wing of the Ford stock company to Moab for filming of his latest western.

Lee Bradley on right as the leader of the
Navajo band in Wagon Master (1950).

For the only time on a John Ford picture, the Navajo in Wagon Master were allowed to speak their
own Navajo language on film. During the
first tense encounter between the Navajo and the Mormon settlers, Travis Blue
(Ben Johnson) volunteers Sandy Owens (Harry Carey Jr.) to translate. “He knows the language better than anyone,” Travis
says. There was some truth to this as
Carey had learned more than a smattering of the language from his Navajo nurse while growing up on a ranch
near Hollywood. Linguistically, the exchange in Wagon Master is probably more
authentic than you’d find in any other Hollywood
western of the period. The important
speaking role of the Navajo chief is played by Lee Bradley with impressive authority.

Even though tensions between the cultures run high during
the scene in the Navajo camp, the Indian viewpoint is respected. Best of all, the situation is resolved
peacefully.

I love that this is a John Ford western which prominently
includes Indians—and in which no Indians die.

Harry Carey, Jr., Ben Johnson, and Ward Bond approach the Indians.

Jim Thorpe at the
Dance

While most of the Indian actors in Wagon Master are Navajo, two
are not. Maria “Movita” Castenada, who
plays the part of the woman attacked by an outlaw, was not Native American. And the very memorable Jim Thorpe was a Native
American, but not a Navajo.

Jim Thorpe at the 1912 Olympics.

Jim Thorpe came from Oklahoma,
raised as a member of the Sac and Fox tribe.
He became an international sensation when he dominated the 1912
Olympics, winning gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon. Then he became even more famous when he was
stripped of his Olympic medals after the press revealed that he had played two
seasons of semi-professional baseball.
Subsequently, Thorpe excelled in professional baseball, football, and
basketball, gaining a reputation as the greatest all-around athlete of his day.

When the Great Depression hit, Thorpe was in his early 40s,
his athletic career behind him. Like so
many others, he went to Hollywood,
looking for work. From 1931 on, he
appeared in bit parts in more than fifty movies. Wagon
Master was the last of them, filmed when he was 61 years old. The following year, he was hospitalized for
lip cancer. His health failing, he died
of heart failure in 1953.

In Wagon Master,
Jim Thorpe is the Indian who dances next to Jane Darwell, a core member of the John
Ford stock company. They share a
fascinating shot together. Thorpe
inscrutably stares straight ahead, his large body moving to the rhythm. Beside him, in strong contrast, Darwell is
small and almost girlishly enthusiastic, looking up at her companion with an
innocent amazement.

I bet Ford loved that shot.

Jim Thorpe and Jane Darwell at the dance at the Navajo camp.

Ford contrasts Thorpe and Darwell with another pairing of
Mormon pioneer and Navajo at the dance.

Navajo Tributes to
John Ford

In Print the Legend,
Scott Eyman’s invaluable biography of John Ford, Eyman recounts how the Navajo
presented Ford with a ceremonial deer hide during the filming of The Searchers,
six years after Wagon Master. It was
inscribed to Ford, with the second stanza adapted from a Navajo night chant:

We present this deer hide

to our fellow tribesman

Natani
Nez

As a token of appreciation for the
generosity

and friendship he has extended to
us in

his many activities in our valley

In your travels may there be

beauty behind you

beauty on both sides of you

and beauty ahead of you

from your friends the Navajo of
Monument Valley

Utah—Arizona

Many years later, when a statue of John Ford was dedicated in his hometown of Portland, Maine
in 1998, a contingent of representatives from the Navajo Nation traveled across the country to participate in
the ceremony. At the age of 96, medicine man Billy Yellow,
who had served as a member in good standing of Ford’s stock company, led a prayer in honor of the director who had brought the Navajo’s beautiful homeland to the attention of a vast worldwide audience.

4 comments:

There's something about Ford's stock company that always makes me smile, whether it's Francis Ford grinning, or Danny Borzage on the accordion, or the Indians on the hillside. I wish I could have found more research on the exact nature of Navajo participation (and some photographs that identified our Indian stars!). It looks to me like Ford brought a couple of Navajo participants back to the studio for a scene like the dance, but most of the extras were the usual Hollywood suspects in makeup. Our real Navajo band is best scene in the exteriors. But I'd love to see some solid research into this.

Thanks, Silver Screenings! I see that we split Ford's self-proclaimed favorite movies between our blogs. Maybe I made the better choice this time!http://silverscreenings.org/2014/07/06/john-fords-theatre-of-faux-piety/

About 21 Essays

21 Essays is my cultural history blog. In 2007, I challenged myself to write 21 essays in 21 days on a single focused topic—the classic German silent film The Golem (1920).I liked that format and so I’m reviving it here as a way of exploring favorite things (movies, books, paintings, etc.) in depth.

About the Author

Lee Price is the Director of Development at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (Philadelphia, PA). In addition, he writes a tourism/history blog called "Tour America's Treasures" and recently concluded two limited-duration blogs, "June and Art" and "Preserving a Family Collection."

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"There's something I'm finding out as I'm aging--that I am in love with the world."